Last weekend, at least eight softball teams from America’s Finest City Softball League (AFCSL) ventured out to Palm Springs for the 17th Annual Winter Classic, despite protests from dozens of teams and hundreds of players who, like me, vowed never to return to the tournament following last year’s debacle.

Any words I could use to describe last year’s tournament would be too kind. The level of incompetence and calculated deceit teams and players fell victim to was borderline criminal.

Last year, there were far too many teams and too few fields, and it wasn’t until all the players on all the teams had arrived – after we had paid for flights, hotels and rental cars – that we were told the 2007 edition of the Winter Classic would not be played as advertised.

Instead of a double-elimination tournament, which allows for a team to lose in tournament play and still compete until it loses a second game, participants were told they would be playing in a single-elimination tournament. Lose once, and you’re gone.

Teams and players were outraged.

Going from a double-elimination tournament, where teams can lose a game but still rebound and make a run, to a single-loss set-up, where one outfield error can ruin an entire weekend, changes the tournament dynamic considerably.

Teams would not have come if they had known it would be a single-elimination tournament. They would have demanded refunds, and the tournament would have been chaos. Knowing this, tournament organizers chose not to inform the players until we had arrived.

Last year, the tournament director, Vicki Oltean, allowed 132 teams to register for the tournament. That was 58 more, or nearly double, than what was advertised would be allowed.

With too many teams for too few fields, scheduling games became near logistically impossible. Some teams didn’t even play their first tournament games until Saturday at 10 p.m. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the desert in January, but after the sun dips behind the majestic, western mountain range (about 3 p.m.), it gets downright cold. The later it gets, the colder it gets. You may also recall, last winter was one of the coldest on record in Southern California.

In other words, if you got a chance to run around the bases, you’d leak ice instead of sweat.

Last year, the Winter Classic was, without doubt, the worst softball tournament I’d ever been to. This year, I can only hope it fared better.

Remarkably, the tournament director for this past weekend’s event was still Vicki Oltean.

Oltean, who is a Palm Springs city employee, works for the department of Parks and Recreation. When players returned home after last year’s disaster, many of them (myself included) fired off nasty letters to the City Council and to Oltean.

After pressure mounted, Oltean finally responded in writing to the City Council: “I realize that some teams were unhappy with this year’s tournament because of the last-minute change in the tournament’s format. First, I want to apologize to the teams that feel the tournament did not meet their expectations.”

She continued on saying she accepted too many teams, and because of the error was forced to make a “last-minute change in the format resulting in single-elimination play for the Open Division (64 teams).”

Looking at the letter again, I am still dumbstrick by her choice of words: “last-minute change.”

Vicki, you work for the Parks and Recreation Department for the City of Palm Springs. You have access to the availability calendars for all the softball fields in the Coachella Valley. You accepted 58 teams more than what you originally said you could accommodate and you only figured out at 9 p.m. the night before the tournament that you screwed up? You’ll have to excuse those who don’t believe you.

Maybe that’s why, at last count, this year’s Winter Classic was at just more than half its capacity, and a third of last year’s mark.

When teams travel from as far away as Orlando, New York and Toronto, they had better feel as if they’d gotten their money’s worth. When you lie to them, and then lie to cover it up, they’re going to go looking for another event.

That’s just what they found in this weekend’s Sin City Shootout in Las Vegas. Nearly 70 teams will be competing in the first-ever gay softball tournament held in Las Vegas. It is, incidentally, organized by members of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Softball League as a direct result of the ineptitude and deception encountered at last year’s Winter Classic.

At least four teams from San Diego will be attending the Vegas tournament, and, in the spirit of the event, if I had to bet as to whether Vegas or Palm Springs was going to be better organized or more pleasant, I’d go all-in on Sin City.